


Somewhere

by PunkHazard



Category: Snowpiercer (2013)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-11
Updated: 2014-07-11
Packaged: 2018-02-08 10:28:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,424
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1937427
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PunkHazard/pseuds/PunkHazard
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Timmy and Curtis make new friends after a day at the amusement park.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Somewhere

**Author's Note:**

> There was [a picture](http://38.media.tumblr.com/c3cbeb88dea86de53c030865028b7f6e/tumblr_n77xewCzpL1raoayro1_1280.jpg) and I needed a happy AU.

The day passes in a blur of funnel cakes, hurl-inducing rides, lemonade, nachos, more rides, pizza, that spinny centrifugal-force ride that sticks you up to the side of a giant cylinder, and by the time Curtis is on his last legs, Timmy's gunning for his next coaster. _Don't feed him too much junk food,_ Tanya had said. _Don't let him get too excited,_ Tanya had said. _**I'm trusting you with my son, Everett,**_ Tanya had said. 

(Okay, threatened.) 

Curtis, staunchly resisting Timmy's big, bright eyes and toothy grin and adorable poofy head of hair, haggles the terms of their agreement with the expertise of... someone without a whole lot of expertise. 

He manages to whittle the boy's demands from six more rides and Chuck-E-Cheese's for dinner down to one more ride and a local mom and pop's restaurant that serves breakfast for dinner, with the caveat that they get ice cream just before. Timmy drives a hard bargain, but they seal the deal with an exploding fistbump, so the contract is inviolable. 

Timmy picks the last event, as per their contract, and he chooses the biggest, baddest motherlover this side of the park, a loop-the-loop steel deathtrap called Snowpiercer, affectionately dubbed by park-goers and local media as The Train. They're on line behind a father-daughter pair, who speak to each other occasionally in Korean but are otherwise pretty quiet. 

The girl turns to look curiously at Curtis and Timmy, but when the kid grins and waves, she returns the smile and gives him a cheery wave in return before turning back around to say something to her father. He smiles at her, a crooked grin turning up the corners of his mouth (and fingers twitching for a cigarette; Curtis recognizes the signs) before focusing on the line again as it moves forward. 

When they're finally seated, the girl looks over her shoulder at Timmy and gives him a mischievous look. "You ready?" she asks, the question dissolving into a laugh at the end when Timmy nods so hard their cart shakes. 

Snowpiercer creaks up the first hill, each click of the chain pulling them to the top echoing around them while Timmy squirms in his seat against his shoulder restraints. When their cart peaks the incline, Curtis hears the man in front of him hiss 'Shit!' just before the cart goes over and his stomach drops out. 

On the second loop, when the rush of adrenaline has taken the edge off the steep drops and sudden turns, the car slows as it reaches the highest point. Curtis assumes it's so they'll have a moment of suspense before they finish off the circle, but it just... stops. 

"Shit," the guy in front of him says again, eyes already on the control panel down on the ground. Park workers are swarming it, a crowd gathering at the base of the coaster as blood rushes to Curtis's head. 

They're silent for a while, all four of them listening in on the chatter in front and behind their cart. 

"My dad says we'll probably be here for a while," the girl finally pipes up, turning her head, her long hair swinging in the breeze. "He says it looks like the panel is out of power. I'm Yona." 

"Curtis," Curtis says. 

"I'm Timmy," Timmy says. "How's your dad know all that?" 

"Engineer," her dad grunts. "Security." After an expectant pause, he adds, "Namgoong Minsoo," then continues in Korean. 

"He says don't try to say it," Yona translates promptly, "it hurts his ears." 

That draws a laugh out of Curtis, who whips his beanie off his head and stuffs it into his jacket pocket before gravity can pull it off his head. He shifts uncomfortably aginst the shoulder restraints, but his weight is distributed fairly evenly and there's no odd pressure anywhere. Yona and Namgoong seem comfortable as well, so he turns to Timmy instead. 

"Hanging in there, buddy?" 

"I'm okay." 

"Your kid?" Yona asks, watching the exchange. Namgoong gives her a stern look, but she looks back at him, eyes wide, and he relents. 

"Nah," Curtis answers easily, (after all, her question was phrased much more politely than the usual 'That can't possibly be your kid, can it?'), "his dad was in my unit and his mom's a good friend of mine." 

Yona smiles. "So Uncle Curtis?" 

"That's right." 

They chat for a while, until Timmy starts to squirm, brows drawn together. "My head feels heavy," he complains briefly, then settles in again, looking morose. Curtis doesn't know much about kids, but he knows that isn't a good sign and Tanya would kill him if he let something happen to Timmy, so he turns as much as he can in his seat. 

"What do you mean, Timmy? Describe it to me. Maybe I can help." 

Timmy shakes his head, pressing his cheek against the bar over his shoulder and he sighs. Before Curtis has a chance to really start freaking out, Namgoong cranes his head around and looks at them for a few seconds. Then he turns to Yona. 

"He says that Timmy's small, so his heart isn't as strong. You need to get his head above his heart." 

Curtis grabs onto the handlebars of his shoulder restraint and shakes them, just a touch desperately. Namgoong snorts, hisses through his teeth and indicates a lever near his own shoulder. 

"The lap bar and shoulder bars are separate," he says (through Yona), "hit that switch by his shoulder and make him put his head between his knees." 

It takes some finagling, and a lot of reassuring Timmy that even if he started to slip out and fall, Uncle Curtis would definitely absolutely catch him, but they manage it. Curtis supports his back when he needs to equalize, which is once every five minutes or so. 

When a crane finally trundles into the vicinity, the workers can't get the basket through the maze of roller coaster struts and supports to their car. A single worker, barely out of his teens to Curtis's eye, straps into a harness instead, climbing barehanded from the bottom. He scales the structure in five minutes, securing the line as he climbs and dragging another harness with him. 

He starts from the back of the cart, silently helping passengers one by one into the harness and lowering them down before pulling the rig back up. The entire Train falls quiet watching him work. 

When he reaches Timmy, he gestures that the size of the harness is too big for him and helps Curtis strap in instead. He also undoes his own belt and uses it to secure Timmy to Curtis, acting as the counterweight on the rope as he lowers them to the bottom. 

Namgoong comes next, and Yona's been volunteering everyone else to go ahead of her anyway, happy to watch the kid work. Curtis and Namgoong watch from the ground as the worker straps Yona in, releases her safety restraints and rappels down the side of the coaster with her. They don't talk on the way down, but they smile at each other the whole time. 

"His name is Grey," Yona says as she joins their group, after the boy pats her on the shoulder, nods and joins his fellow park workers at the panel. She brandishes her phone. "I got his Facebook." 

"Eww," Timmy says. Her father just looks pained. 

Curtis winks at her, then turns to address Namgoong instead. "Look," he starts awkwardly, "you helped us-- me and Timmy-- a lot up there. What do you say to ice cream and dinner with us? It'll be my treat." 

Yona turns a look on her father that Curtis recognizes easily-- he's been on the receiving end from Timmy numerous times. 

When he finally walks Timmy up to his door and rings the bell, they're both stuffed and happy, no dent in their moods even from their earlier incident. (After all, Timmy'll get to brag about it at school on Monday and Curtis now has the number of some kind of engineering security expert on his contacts list.) 

"You two had fun?" Tanya asks, eyeing Curtis expectantly. 

"Oh yeah," he answers innocently, Timmy giving him a conspiratorial grin, "everything went great." 

"Oh," Tanya says, a smile frozen on her face, "so that roller coaster you got stuck on with my son, that went great?" 

"Shit," Curtis says. 

(Timmy looks at him, eyes wide, but Tanya finally breaks, laughing. _It's fine, Curtis. I'm glad both of you are safe. Thanks for taking care of my boy._ )


End file.
